"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day when I had expressed myself puzzled by the curious gaps in German taste, and even in German knowledge; by their enthusiasm for the second rate in poetry and literature, and by their amazing uncertain mixture of information and blank complacent ignorance. For when an Englishman says "Goethe! Schiller!—Was is das?" you are not surprised. It is just what you expect of an Englishman, and for all that he may know how to build bridges and keep his temper in games and argument. But when ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... establishing a more exacting standard of righteousness. This more exacting righteousness Jesus illustrated by a series of restatements of the older law, and then by a group of criticisms of current religious practice. The sermon closed with warnings against complacent censoriousness in judging other men's failures, and a solemn declaration of the vital seriousness of "these sayings of mine." The righteousness required by this new law is not only more exacting ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... weeks this sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self—and then one afternoon, he smiled a little grimly, and, leaving the hotel, started along the ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... us, we must look ourselves and the German character in the face—this unknown, problematic character, which for a century in contradiction to its own inmost being, has been flattering and lulling itself with hackneyed and complacent phrases and unproved judgments. For we can undertake nothing and claim nothing which has not its prototype in our own soul and is not founded in our ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... to their husbands; they are content to be relegated to the background on all occasions when they are not wanted. They are dependent. They seldom wear an air of triumph and rarely take the lead. But American women are complacent and assured, they do most of the talking, make most of the plans: if they are not seen, it is because they are in the background; they are either active prominently elsewhere or are high on pedestals. With each other they are mostly or often humorously direct, whereas with men they seem to ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... unblest, uncaressed, unloved, unknown; then he grows up apace, and tops his father's inches; he is a man now, and may well be turned adrift; if he can manage to make money, they are friends; but if he can only contrive to spend it, enemies. Then the complacent father moans about ingratitude, for he did his duty by the boy ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... still," observed the landlord, finally, with a complacent glance at the dessert course of prunes to which his guests were helping themselves from a central reservoir, "Town so still, hardly seems like show-day's come round again. Yet there's be'n some shore signs lately: when my shavers come honeyin' up with, 'Say, pa, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... complicated and confused matters; many a seeming Pharisee is at heart a self-condemned publican, and ought to be comforted, and not cursed; while many a publican is, in the midst of all his foul sins, a thorough exclusive and self-complacent Pharisee, and needs not the right hand of mercy, but the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... he learned the joy of loving Angy. More than one Long Island lassie had thrown herself at his head. Of course Blossy would "get over" this; and Angy knew that his heart was hers as much as it had been the day he purchased his wedding-beaver; but Abe could not refrain from a chuckle of complacent amusement as he ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... when Dr. Lacey arrived. Happy as a bird, Fanny sprang up the steps. Everything about her seemed homelike and cheerful. Kind, dusky faces peered at her from every corner, while Aunt Dilsey, with a complacent smile, stood ready to receive her. Fanny was prepared to like everything, but there was something peculiarly pleasing to her in Aunt Dilsey's broad, good-humored face. Going up to her she took both her hands, and said, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... do not like frogging in person. The creature smiles. Also he appeals because he is ugly and complacent. But for the grace of God I might have looked so. He sits in supreme hideousness frozen to the end of a wet log, with his desirable hind legs spread in view, and smiles his bronze smile of confidence in his own charm and my friendship. It is more than I can do to betray that ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... unreasoning wrath had flashed up within him, not against the system, but against that tall stooping man, worn with work, who was at once its representative and its flower. Up there the great man stood—so his thoughts ran—complacent, self-satisfied, careless of the harm which his system wrought. Down here upon the grass walked a man warped and perverted out of his natural course. He had been sent to Eton and to Oxford, and had been filled with longings and desires which could have no fruition; he had been trained ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... for he turned his head up, down, from side to side, and drew in his chin with prinky little jerks and tilts. He would stretch his neck, throw up his head, turn it to one side and smirk—actually smirk, the most complacent and self-satisfied smirk that anyone ever saw on the face of a bird. It was so comical that Freckles and the Angel told the Bird ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... ship depended mainly upon her sailing qualities and the master's willingness to risk being dismasted or hulled by the pursuer's shot. Granted a capful of wind on his beam, a fleet keel under foot, and a complacent skipper aft, the flight direct was perhaps the means of escape the sailor loved above all others. The spice of danger it involved, the dash and frolic of the chase, the joy of seeing his leaping "barky" draw slowly ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... we love that you may loathe Intrigue and darkness, that you may disperse The ranks of ugly tyrannies and, worse, The sodden languor and complacent sloth. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... time since Davy had seen him. His complexion had quite lost its beautiful transparency, and his jaunty little paper tunic was sadly rumpled, and, moreover, he had lost his cocked hat. All this, however, had not at all disturbed his complacent conceit; he was, if anything, ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... only son, possessed of many noble and generous qualities, without any of his father's intense selfishness, was a wanderer and an outcast on the earth, and he unmoved, undisturbed, complacent! ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... then, in one sense, be more costly, as culture is harder to come by than cake. The profusion of viands now heaped upon the table, betrays poverty of the worst sort. Having nothing better to offer, we offer victuals; and this we do with something of that complacent, satisfied air with which some more northern tribes present their ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Russian officers and soldiers, who have shown nothing but kindness and delicacy of feeling since their entrance into the fortress. This consideration strikes me as being utterly wasted on the captured officers, who treat the situation superciliously and are quite complacent in their ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... around and regarded me strangely, mirth lurking in her eyes. She seemed about to retort, and then to conquer the impulse. The effect of this was to make me anything but self-complacent. She sat down in the chair and for a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cities, and invites the foe To drive his plough o'er ruin'd walls. Then calm your spirit; I can tell How once, when youth in all my veins Was glowing, blind with rage, I fell On friend and foe in ribald strains. Come, let me change my sour for sweet, And smile complacent as before: Hear me my palinode repeat, And give me back your ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Oliver, of Castle Oliver (now Cloghnafoy), Co. Limerick, and a peasant girl on his estate. This is possible enough, for the period was one when squires exercised "seigneurial rights," and when colleens were complacent. If they were not, they ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from his view in the flood of moral distress. Everything he had ever been or hoped to ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... your manner and countenance proclaim it yet more strongly than your words. The only genuine effect of a sincere scepticism is and must be, not the complacent and frivolous humor which too often attaches to it, but a mournful confession of the melancholy condition to which, if true, the theory reduces the sceptic ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... that direction. It was evident that it announced the unexpected arrival of some popular resident. Attracted like the others, Grant turned and saw the company making way for the smiling, easy, half-saucy, half-complacent entry of a handsomely dressed young girl. As she turned from time to time to recognize with rallying familiarity or charming impertinence some of her admirers, there was that in her tone and gesture which instantly recalled to him the past. It was unmistakably ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Sharpe, laying aside his sledge with an aggrieved manner which was, however, as complacent as his fatigue and discontent, "ez one of them nat'ral born finikin skunks ez I despise. I reckon he began to give p'ints to his parents when he was about knee-high to Richelieu there. He's on them confidential ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... them." There is a general feeling that the churches do not understand them or sympathize with the social and industrial disabilities of the men. They feel that the ideals of life for which the Church stands are dull, dim, and altogether unnatural; its standard of comfort and complacent respectability makes no appeal to them and they have no part or lot in it. They feel that this respectability of the Church is quite in keeping with flagrant selfishness in social and industrial relationships, that the Church is largely in ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... and vivacity. They all have a charming young teacher, with whom they carry on a most romantic flirtation, that of course means nothing; and each one of these fair students, (who conscientiously puts a "g" to every termination possible, and who says monseer,) will tell you, with a complacent smile, that Professor —— considers her pronunciation unusually excellent. They are all studying in the blissful anticipation of a trip to Paris, where they will be presented to the Empress in yellow satin gowns, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... sound of music from its particular point of rendezvous to the common centre. The stage now began to fill with the privileged, among whom were many of the high aristocracy of the ruling canton, most of its officials, who were too dignified to be more than complacent spectators of revels like these, many nobles of mark from Prance and Italy, a few travellers from England, for in that age England was deemed a distant country and sent forth but a few of her elite to represent her on such occasions, most of those from the adjoining ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Then she and Genevieve and you and I will see if we can't restore the ante-bellum modus vivendi! Come on! Emelene and Alys always breakfast in bed, anyway, and it will be no trouble to get Betty over." The two men rode home in complacent silence. It was long past midnight. They sat on the veranda to finish their cigars before going into ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips, although complacent, was pathetic. It was peculiar, that voice of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time his eyes—those ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... them came here. Pacicchelli did, however, in the seventeenth century, though he has left us no description of the place. He crossed the whole Sila from the Ionian to the other sea. I like this amiable and loquacious creature, restlessly gadding about Europe, gloriously complacent, hopelessly, absorbed in trivialities, and credulous beyond belief. In fact (as the reader may have observed), I like all these old travellers, not so much for what they actually say, as for their implicit outlook upon life. This Pacicchelli was a fellow of our Royal Society, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... gaze. It was perfectly true. Ralph Bingham was leaning on his bicycle in the roadway, smoking a cigarette. Even at this distance one could detect the man's disgustingly complacent expression. Rupert Bailey was sitting with his back against the door of the Woodfield Garage, looking rather used up. He was a man who liked to keep himself clean and tidy, and it was plain that the cross-country ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... it is infamous that the struggle should be so hard for so many. All of us who are ignorant or complacent or skeptical about the social evils of our time are sharers in the iniquity of those who fall. Many of us live in mean satisfaction, just because we ourselves have found comfort and security; that is how these evil forces are able to go on year after year leading thousands ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... sharp glance at his host as he got up, but Carrados's expression was merely benignly complacent. Then he strolled ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... the mention, so shortly it is told in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered into mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their deaths the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-five common men and women were found fourteen who, by no terror of stake or torture, could be tempted to say that they believed what they did not believe. History for ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... a complicated and uncomfortable state of mind to be in, and Kate's state of mind was not much more complacent. She also had broken a promise and betrayed a trust, and she also believed she had done it for the good of the betrayed. To their discomforting sense of guilt was added Marion's disappointment at not meeting Jack, and Kate's sprained ankle, which was as swollen and painful ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... concentrated in his own mind; he is up at his loom, weaving and weaving, to set the landscape to words. This one peers about, as he goes, among the grasses; he waits by the canal to watch the dragon-flies; he leans on the gate of the pasture, and cannot look enough upon the complacent kine. And here comes another, talking, laughing, and gesticulating to himself. His face changes from time to time, as indignation flashes from his eyes or anger clouds his forehead. He is composing articles, delivering orations, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cleared a little, although her estimate of Mrs. Burton's opinion was not a very high one. "That may account for Captain Dacre's extremely complacent attitude," she said. "He regards the attentions paid to his fiancee ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... are like the labors of those babies," thought he. And then he wondered whether the wisest thing in life were not to beget two or three of these little creatures and watch them grow up with complacent curiosity. A longing for marriage breathed on his soul. A man is not so lost when he is not alone. At any rate, he hears some one stirring at his side in hours of trouble or of uncertainty; and it is something only to be able to speak on equal ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... attitude, wearing satin knickerbockers and waistcoat, and still retaining the beautiful lace collar on his aristocratic shoulders. His eyes have the same dreamy look as in other portraits. On his right are his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, the former demurely complacent as before, the latter timid and dainty. On the left the little Princess Anne frolics with Prince James in simple childish fashion. As a composition, the picture is somewhat stiff and artificial, but the single figures are all rendered ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... level of dry personal detail speaks through each chapter; or if occasional relief is afforded, it is "in liquid lines mellifluously bland," and prosier than all the rest. The one source of amusement that the reader will discover is the complacent self-confidence which no assumption of modesty can hide. "A controversy had been raging for at least a week" in Philadelphia about the author's letters in the "Illustrated London News." His defender ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... better man than your words suggest, and, what is of more consequence, a receptive man. I should have little hope for any one who came from a quiet talk with Mrs. Yocomb in a complacent mood or merely disposed to indulge in a few platitudes on the sweetness and quaintness of her character, and some sentimentalities in regard to Friends. If the depths of one's nature were not stirred, then I would believe that there were no ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Baths. On one occasion at the ducal villa, his Highness, who spoke English perfectly, said as she entered the room, "Here comes the Queen of the Baths!" "He calls me his Queen," said she, turning to the surrounding circle with a magnificent wave of the hand and delightedly complacent smile. It was not exactly that that the Duke had said, but he was immensely amused, as were we all, for ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... A self-complacent smile curled her thin lips, as she quietly noted the effects of her somewhat lengthy speech. Like all efforts of an unexpected and startling nature it produced a decided sensation. The little lady in brocade and ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... after-sadness that came) To hear the consummate self-satisfaction With which the young Duke and the old dame Would let her advise, and criticise, And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, childlike, parcel out praise or blame: They bore it all in complacent guise, As though an artificer, after contriving {200} A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed accomplished—our village was a city. The great wheel we had set whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... His self-complacent reflections were cut short by the entrance of his daughter. She stood beside him, and laid her hand upon his arm with a caressing gesture. No other living creature durst have taken that liberty with him; but to Crawford his daughter Helen was a being apart from common humanity. She was small, but ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a day older than fourteen, my dear Bev," said the Viscount, with a complacent nod, as they halted in the perfumed shade of an adjacent rick; "that's his stable voice assumed for the occasion, and, between you and me, I can't think how he does it. Egad! he's the most remarkable boy that ever wore livery, the sharpest, the gamest. I picked him up ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... brought down, one after another, all the pillars of the temple. But he had dealt out his own fate along with the fate of the rest: crushed yet complacent, he lay among the ruins. The glamour of success and of association with the successful was dazzling him. The pomp and luxury of plutocracy inwrapped him, and he had a sudden sweet shuddering vision of himself dining with still others of the wealthy just because they were wealthy, and prominent, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... contest, had now a Conservative Association, with a banker for its chairman, and a brewer for its vice-president, and four sharp lawyers nibbing their pens, noting their memorandum-books, and assuring their neighbours, with a consoling and complacent air, that 'Property must tell in the long run.' Whispers also were about, that when the proper time arrived, a Conservative candidate would certainly have the honour of addressing the electors. No name mentioned, but it was not ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... that his wife wished him indoors. He read aloud inane items of village news from the weekly paper, and only the veiled mockery of his eyes betrayed the fact that he was not the most devoted and the most complacent of husbands. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... testimony would not be taken as evidence in any court of law; besides, in the transaction she was in the eyes of the law the more culpable of the two, being the chief instigator of the plot, therefore it was in a more complacent frame of mind that Sir Ralph, early the following morning, ere the self-satisfied widow had awakened from those slumbers that had been during the night partially and pleasantly disturbed by means of her ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... red, leaving the rest uncolored; and where the garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, etc., in perspective—a meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted, with a complacent ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... curves and graceful sallies, they pursue and circumvent each other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but rarely actually deliver blows upon each other. Every thrust is parried, every movement met. ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... my shock of that kind for life, of which I do not intend to speak, but the weather is of a nature that I have never before observed in this country, with small seas, rare and moderate storms, and on this first Yule-day a peace on the earth and such a complacent calm on the sea that you might row out in a trough. The wreckage that came in on the 8th and 9th December last was the only extravagance, so to speak, of the sea this year, for there was too much in some places, and this will probably give the Lensmand a pretext ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... does, that is infinitely entertaining. Other artists draw to amuse us; Mr. Caldecott seems to draw to amuse himself,—and this is his charm. One feels that he must have chuckled inwardly as he puffed the cheeks of his "Jovial Huntsmen;" or sketched that inimitably complacent dog in the "House that Jack Built;" or exhibited the exploits of the immortal "train- band captain" of "famous London town." This last is his masterpiece. Cowper himself must have rejoiced at it,—and Lady Austen. There are two sketches in this book—they occupy the concluding ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... The complacent face of Peaks maddened him, and Clyde felt that, perhaps for the first time in his life, he had lost a battle. He could not bear the sight of the boatswain's placid features, unruffled by anything like anger or malice. He felt that he ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... temporary and partial alleviations, until the overthrow of private capitalism. The popular discontent resulting from this experience was the provoking cause of the Revolution. It awoke Americans from their self-complacent dream that the social problem had been solved or could be solved by a system of democracy limited to merely political forms, and set them to seeking ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Confession Albums, where complacent or polite visitors are asked to state what in their opinion is the most beautiful this and that and the other, always including "the most beautiful form of words." Serious people quote from DANTE or KEATS or SHAKSPEARE; flippant persons write "Not guilty" or "Will you have it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... flowers for grandmamma is real work," was my complacent rejoinder, pressing the wooden basket I carried closer to my side, and thinking myself a very industrious ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... realize fully the terrible proportions of this problem. We whose lives assume little, require little of them. Intangible objections to the desires of our hearts do not count for much against their realization; there needs the rough attrition of reality to turn back our calm, complacent acquisition of that which we see to be for our best interest in the emotional world. Claims of ancestry mean nothing. Claims of society mean not much more. Claims of wealth are considered as evanescent among a class of men who, by their efforts and genius, are able to render absolute wealth itself ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the chagrin of discomfiture, laughs at the promises of a virtuous love, calls himself a gay deceiver, great monster, and is once more self-complacent. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... like some wild animal or half-savage monomaniac than an ordinary young man under five-and-twenty. He had, moreover, at this moment, when all the energies of his nature suddenly burst out, a power of deliberate, complacent, and pitiless moral self-vivisection, a power of performing upon his character such cutting and ripping-open operations as he thought beneficial to himself, which makes one think of the abnormal faculty of enduring pain, the abnormal and almost cruel ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee, When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee, And all old poets and old songs adore thee. And love to thee is naught, from passionate mood Secured by joy's complacent plenitude!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... but in the after proceedings when the heckling began. This, during his chairmanship, was often severe enough, for owing to unavoidably increased expenditure, dividends were diminishing and shareholders, in consequence, were in anything but complacent mood. Question time always put him on his mettle. Then his mother-wit came out, his lively humour and practical common sense—all unstudied and natural. The effect was striking. Rarely did he fail in disarming ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... fairy fingers at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the winsome damsel in particular, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... a complacent hand, as soon as Blanquette had retired to make the necessary purchases for the evening meal, "you perceive that she is perfectly happy. You were entirely wrong. All is for the best in this best of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... such things were felt in his experience their force was spent long before they had contrived to mar his unruffled countenance. Though the house had tumbled before his eyes, by not a single vibration would his complacent voice have been intensified. He never suffered his feelings to escape his control. Occasionally, to be sure, he might curl his lip, or lift his eyebrows, or depress the corners of his mouth. When deeply moved he might go so far as to diffuse ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... or the administration, are terribly startled; so is the brave noble North; the people are taken unawares; but no wonder; the people saw the Cabinet, the President, and the military in complacent security. These watchmen did nothing to give an early sign of alarm, so the people, confiding in them, went about its daily occupation. But it will rise as one man and in terrible wrath. Vous le verrez mess. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... his master, requesting to speak with Captain Waverley in another apartment. With a heart which beat; a little quicker, not indeed from fear, but from uncertainty and anxiety, Edward obeyed the summons. He found the two gentlemen standing together, an air of complacent dignity on the brow of the Baron, while something like sullenness, or shame, or both, blanked the bold visage of Balmawhapple. The former slipped his arm through that of the latter, and thus seeming to walk with him, while in reality he led him, advanced to meet Waverley, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... is the most arrogant, self-opinionated, self-complacent, vapid piece of humanity in this town or any other town. She irritates me to the point of impoliteness. She never sees that people don't want her. ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... some of my gifts if I could not talk a body to sleep," said Sally, in a satisfied and self-complacent tone. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her head. There was something that is supposed to be the prerogative of royalty in the lift of it. Her smile was complacent in the extreme. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the flexibility which, if revealed, would excite suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was an embodiment of stiff patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of that touch of insolence which is often the mark of a career assured without a struggle; of a self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious of its own deserts and demanding their due reward, of the calmness of a soul that is above suspicion and refuses to admit even in its inmost sanctuary the thought that its motives can be impugned. Meanwhile ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... storm ceased as quickly as it had begun and in a minute they were all as complacent and ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... air of regret that Joan and Dick laughed outright, and in the midst of it a shadow came across their own, and they turned to meet the amused, complacent stare of Bill. In acknowledging the introduction, Joan felt that his piercing eyes were studying her, probing her soul, as appraisingly as if seeking to lay her appearance and character bare. His harsh, determined face suddenly broke into ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as "The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and "The Committee appointed annually to look into the Accounts of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... interrupted the complacent discourse of Madame Cheron and the painful considerations, which it had forced upon Emily. When the repast, which was rendered ostentatious by the attendance of a great number of servants, and by a profusion of plate, was over, Madame Cheron retired to her chamber, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... were seated at a table in a restaurant. Dinner was over, and from all around them came the murmur of complacent and well-fed London. A string band of just sufficient strength gave forth a ragtime effort; a supreme being hovered near to ensure that the '65 brandy was all it should be. Of the men themselves little need be said: my story is not of them. Only their conversation, half serious, half joking, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... on the deck of the s.s. Paretta, and found his sister and a debonair and complacent Bones waiting for him. With them was ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did not like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little shiny boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he held the cup in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... midnight sweep Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark, To hear—and sink again in sleep! Or at an earlier call, to mark, By blazing fire, the still suspense Of self-complacent innocence; ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... gate, and abutting on the street, is a small square building of brick, one story in height—probably the porter's lodge and tool-house of former days. There is a large fruit garden attached to the house, which is in excellent condition, taking life comfortably, and having the complacent air of a well-preserved beau of the ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of forty-seven years the esteemed rector ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the restaurant, and entered the small electric brougham which was waiting for him. He lit a cigarette and leaned back amongst the cushions, musing over the events of the evening with a complacent smile. The last few weeks seemed to have wrought some subtle change in the man. His face was at once stronger and weaker, more determined, and yet in a sense less trustworthy. His manner had gained in assertion, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... singling out a passer-by upon whose complacent features prosperity had set its smug hall-mark—"there, but for the grace of God, goes Nat Duncan!" He rolled the paraphrase upon his tongue and found it bitter—not, however, with a tonic bitterness. "Lord, what a worthless critter I am! No good to myself—nor to anybody ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... They explained to no purpose, and, in response to a plaintive inquiry where to go, were severely told, "We don't know, but go down from here immediately." So they came down, crimson but giggling, and saw me (they said) roaming about with an expression at once wistful and complacent. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the trap, and smiled with complacent superiority. "Patience," said he. And with an air of shrewdness he looked into his wife's eyes and added: "Would you be glad to be the wife of a receiver ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... degrees of pride—one, wherein a man is self-complacent; the other, wherein he is unable to accept himself. Of these two degrees, the second is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Picardy that thar'll be loopholes cut on all four sides uh that thar cabin, and Jemimy and the twins'll be ready to argy with anybody that comes moochin' around unfriendly. I'm the peaceablest man you ever seen, but when I make up my mind to a thing, I'm firm! Pur-ty tol'able firm!" he added with complacent emphasis. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... and pacify thy father's wrath, That he destroy not me, through fierce revenge Of their iniquities who have consumed 430 His wealth, and, in their folly scorn'd his son. To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied, Smiling complacent. Fear not; my own son Hath pleaded for thee. Therefore (taught thyself That truth) teach others the superior worth Of benefits with injuries compared. But go ye forth, thou and the sacred bard, That ye may sit distant in yonder court From all this carnage, while I give command, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... with him, but he knew that Marchant, dreamer and incoherent poet, his heart aflame with zeal for humanity, was far nearer the truth of life than the smug complacent Pharisees that fattened from the toil of the helpless many who could do nothing but ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... awaken the conscience and to disturb the complacent self-righteousness of the young inquirer, Jesus now tested him in the light of the commandments in which God has revealed his holy will. The youth at once replied, "All these things have I observed ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... which might have been called out by the enthusiastic praise that followed the lawyer's confession. But he was painfully conscious of what now seemed to him a monstrous situation! Here was, he believed, the actual accomplice of the road agents calmly receiving the complacent and puerile confessions of the men who were seeking to outwit them. Could he, in ordinary justice to them, to himself, or the mission he conceived he was pursuing, refrain from exposing her, or warning them ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... true to his complacent policy, now recognized Masanaga as head of the house of Hatakeyama, Tokuhon having just died (1455). But Yoshinari did not acquiesce. In 1456, he marched with a Kawachi army against Masanaga, and a deadly struggle was barely prevented by the intervention of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... rest of this extract is an expression—which will be followed later by many like it—of the sense that people in the North were getting too complacent a notion of what had been done and what could be done ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... then erected, for it bore the date 1698, and the initials "W. M." for William and Mary. There it was, on a beam, above the chancel arch, and the lion and unicorn on either side, the first with a huge tongue hanging out at the corner of his mouth, looking very complacent, as though he were displaying the royal arms, the unicorn slim and dapper with a chain hanging ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of flame, ETHEREAL VIRGINS! sweep O'er Earth's fair bosom, and complacent deep; Where dwell my vegetative realms benumb'd, 460 In buds imprison'd, or in bulbs intomb'd, Pervade, PELLUCID FORMS! their cold retreat, Ray from bright urns your viewless floods of heat; From earth's deep wastes electric ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... dust of Abyssinia on their Piccadilly shoes, or sighed indiscriminately for the snow-tinted breezes of the Klondike and Ceylon. Never, either, in all his full round of experience had the village doctor had a surgical patient as serenely complacent as little Eve Edgarton, or any anxious relative as madly restive as little ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... that they should form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that Austria could no longer count as an equal in the Continental Olympus, the membership of which was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... frequently vented itself in blows and brutality, in spite of the remarkable musical facility with which Maria appropriated teaching, and the brilliant gifts which would have flattered the pride and softened the sympathies of a more gentle and complacent parent. The young girl, in spite of her prodigious instinct for art and her splendid intelligence, had a peculiarly intractable organ. The lower notes of the voice were very imperfect, the upper tones thin, disagreeable, and hard, the middle ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... flame of curiosity in Jane's circles, she accepted a number of dances from Teddy—in fact the big fanciful "T" which Jane remembered so well in the spook letter, was scribbled all over her dancing card, while Judith accepted Ray Mann, a chum of Ted's, in complacent substitution. Ray was a capital fellow, with such a stock of chestnut hair he might have matched up pretty well with Bobbie, if her spare time had not been so filled in with Dave Jordan, ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... vital interdependent triad—are surely a preoccupation strong enough and precious enough to startle the minds of the most complacent; and it is with the object of awakening all to their possibilities—in health or in disease—of protection of the one, and hope and regeneration under the other, that the course of study has been inaugurated of which the following is but a ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... (Oxford, 1869, vol. i. p. 260), when he has proved this point with much complacent argumentation, he poses himself with the obvious difficulty that in point of fact this is not true; for many who are apparently in mortal sin do possess property and have dominion. What, then, is to be done, for "they be commonly mighty, and no man dare take from them"? His answer is not ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... sense of humour referred to her as a member of "Harry Tate's Own," while others, most unkindly, said she belonged to the "Ragtime Navy." But she did not seem to mind. She knew in her heart of hearts that her work was of paramount importance, and, complacent in the knowledge, smiled sweetly as a well-conducted lady should when jibes and insults are hurled ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... nouns, and adjectives, floundering through swamps and morasses, in a perfect steeple chase of words. Thanks to the proverbial politeness of my friends, I came off covered with glory; the more mistakes I made the more complacent ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
